Zenescope - Omnibusted #20: Grimm Fairy Tales TPB Volume 9

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Ticketmaster

Good morning, Ticketholders!

Today, I've compiled a Zenescope - Omnibusted collection of my GFT Retrospective reviews for Volume Nine of Grimm Fairy Tales, which is where I remember starting to hate Sela Mathers as a character (not counting the time the writers killed her off, or the many times they turned her into a non-committal ditz to introduce a new love interest when Robert was perfectly fine in that role already, or the times they turned her into a helpless damsel when we know she has an entire magic book full of monsters and weapons at her disposal and can shoot magic energy lasers from her hands, or the time they wasted a perfectly amazing new lead character with unexplored lore so they could bring her back to life, write her completely out of character, pressure her into failure, and reduce her to a female comic book character because the stakes got too high and all the men got killed).

If that rant didn't clue you in, the Retrospective got me to hate Sela's character much earlier than I did on first read. The Snow White & Rose Red two-parter, almost everything after Sela died, and everything that happened after her resurrection (but especially the material leading up to Hard Choices) all contributed to tarnishing Sela as a character (with the bright side being the new dimensions that Belinda got added to her character in the meantime, so, even trade, I guess?).

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But before we get to that, it makes some sort of sense to keep continuity in order. So here's the 2010 Halloween Edition, which takes place before all of the "Sela gets trapped in Myst" shenanigans begin:

GFT Halloween Edition #2 (2010)

I remember really wanting this issue to lead to something, considering that Zenescope took the time to put in an editor's note that the story takes place before Hard Choices. Like we needed to be told that the story with Sela on Earth takes place before she got trapped in Myst, right?

Said story begins with an unnamed blonde woman narrating about how watching someone die in front of you "changes you...in more ways than one." Vampire foreshadowing!

Welcome to Bloodfest 2010, a vampire cosplay convention that appears to be taking place in an old plantation house or town hall building in the middle of the woods somewhere. Come dressed as your favorite Dracula, Lost Boy, Cullen, legally distinct Elvira facsimile, or...Hermione Granger by way of Britney Spears' "....Baby, One More Time" schoolgirl outfit? Oh, and stay for the murder...because it's not like dead people can go anywhere!

Of course, the blonde and her three friends show up, and unbeknownst to her, they are real vampires taking the "I'm gonna take my native language as a foreign language elective for an easy A so I can play football" approach to feeding because shooting fish in a barrel is easier when you're a fish with an Uzi...or so their dialogue would have you believe....

We also get some fun, whispered crowd dialogue for those willing to take a closer look at the page. Someone remarks that a given hot girl is "not as hot as her brother's ferret's dentist," someone else seems to confuse prognostication with masturbation twice (though, given that this is a Zenescope publication, maybe the guy did get caught predicting the future in class...?), and two other crowd members discuss the apparent visual similarities of popcorn chicken and tater tots.

Through many instances of the fish-milk-fresh, "vampires don't sparkle" joke, we learn that our blonde is named Sara (because Vampire Knight, maybe?), her Hermione Spears ginger friend is Lisa (because Castlevania?), and their Edward Cullen-meets-Lost Boys male friends are Dennis (which would have been a Hotel Transylvania reference if this came out five years later) and Vincent (because Vincent Price). We also get introduced to a cool-but-nerdy-looking guy named Drake (because Blade), whom Sara hits it off with and who will be important later. By which I mean, later in this story, not in Grimm Fairy Tales lore. I felt obligated to qualify that because this story doesn't matter.

And the reason there's an exclusive, vampire-themed cosplay convention in an old wooden building in the middle of nowhere on Halloween during a full moon? Surprise! It's Belinda!

Sara has a bad feeling and wants to go home, but her friends are too horny and method, so they end up getting ambushed on the way back from Bloodfest by three (or suddenly four?) real vampires (or are they?) named Ian (because Ian Somerhalder played a vampire in The Vampire Diaries), Jacob (because Twilight and The Vampire Diaries again), Eddie (because Twilight again), and Sandra (because True Blood), who take them to a second location to feed on them, scare them, get them to join the fun, or...something; honestly, these characters' motivations are dialogued all over the place. But the basic idea is that somebody (probably Belinda) promised them that if they went beyond-method with wanting to be vampires, they would be officially turned.

So...who's the real vampire, if it wasn't the three-to-four wannabes or any of Sara's friends? Surprise! It was Drake all along! His dialogue is badass, and the transformation sequence and the final look of vampire Drake is cool and pretty damned unique.

In the end, everyone but Sara is brutally, gorily killed, Sara is bitten, and Sela arrives in a new outfit that looks kind of like 90s Wonder Woman without the biker jacket, saving what remains of the day with some white eye-blast telekinesis magic and an entire wooden floor's worth of stakes, which she can apparently do at will despite this taking place when it does and Sela being all "I've never used magic to fight before" in the post-Hard Choices issues.

Then, Sela gives Sara a choice of her own: let Sela kill her to end her suffering, or let Sela take her to "the one person who can help you get through this." Yes, comic book word emphasis continues to not make sense. And yes, despite this setting up something potentially cool, we never learn who that "one person" is and we never see Sara again. And, no; no matter how badly the emphasis on that quote makes me want to do it, I will not make a Tim Curry Command & Conquer joke.

Even though this special got in its own way more often than not and ultimately amounted to nothing besides another Sela vs. Belinda incident with collateral damage, the twists and turns of such a simple narrative were pretty cool, the art style was mostly high-level and consistent with 2010s Zenescope, and Drake was a unique and impressive-looking monster-villain.

This vampire tale may not matter, but it doesn't suck, either.

Okay; on with the real Volume Nine coverage!

GFT #51: The Glass Coffin

Returning to the Brothers Grimm for inspiration, this follow-up to Hard Choices is very loosely based on the Kinder Und Hausmarchen tale of the same name.

The original is classified as a Sleeping Beauty-type tale (though it has more in common with Snow White, considering the jealous mage, the titular sleeping vessel, and the animal and blue-collar humanoid helpers), and has an "even the poor can achieve greatness with luck, kindness, and hard work" moral that feels laughably idealistic in its contemporary and geographic context, as well as in the context of the modern world and workforce. The Glass Coffin has two focal characters. The first is a wandering apprentice tailor who gets lost in the woods (because every fairy tale character ends up in the woods at some point) and has to sleep in trees, gather his own food, beg for charity from the 1800s equivalent of a crazy old man survivalist, hears the voice of God reading Mad Libs prompts to him, and somehow lives through getting carried dozens of miles over rough terrain on the antlers of an oversized stag who killed a giant bull in a fight that contributed massively to German deforestation efforts of the time. The other is a nobleman's orphaned daughter who got magically roofied when she said "no" to a horny magician who broke into her house in the middle of the night and tried to have his way with her. In addition to the sleeping curse, the mage shrunk her kingdom, turned her subjects into bottled unicorn farts, turned her brother into the stag, and transformed himself into the bull because fairy tale villains are stupid. So with the help of her stag-bro and the divine voice in his head, the tailor discovers a secret passage to an underground cavern where standing in specific places and looking at things in a specific order frees the sleeping noblewoman and her people, turns her brother human again, and returns her castle to normal size with no regard for logistics because fairy tales. And because God chose the tailor to rescue her, the noblewoman marries him and they live happily ever after, ignoring the fact that if a woman in a box tells the first man she sees that a wizard tried to rape her and God told her to marry the man who rescued her, there's a chance she might be crazy.

I feel I must qualify this by saying that one should never ignore or sugar-coat rape allegations, and that neither religious devotion nor the female gender are bona fides for insanity.

But neither are they mutually exclusive....

I only mean to highlight how fairy tales (especially German fairy tales) have a way of being darkly bizarre in their logical flow and how they arrive at their "happily ever after" moments.

The Zenescope version picks up where Hard Choices left off, with the Dark One's forces scattered across the Realms, specifically focusing on Myst, where Orcus is having a homecoming to the castle he lost (along with his evil goddess bride) in a battle with Shang and Allexa back in The Devil's Gambit. Which is funny because that makes Orcus either the orphaned noblewoman or the tailor, which is also not funny because one of his subordinates is a mage, and you know what the mage tried to do to the noblewoman in the original story....

While the magician and his ogre assistant, Gruel, debate whether to betray the Dark One and Orcus or take revenge against the "Falseblood rat" (referring to Sela and contradicting Shang's previous statement of her specialness, that she was the first pure human Guardian in history, which we also saw get contradicted back in issue #49 and Hard Choices), we are caught up with Sela, who, with Nissa dead and the Casket of Provenance and her book destroyed, is also trapped in Myst and continues to be written as a boy-crazy Disney princess with survivor's guilt and imposter syndrome. We are also reminded that Shang is dead (which I forgot even though it was one of my favorite things about Hard Choices), that Blake (the sane Realm Knight from Wonderland) is recovering from his wounds, that Thane (the Cowardly Lion's brother from Oz) went missing after the battle, and that Prince Erik (from the Nutcracker Christmas Special) is possibly dead, or at least, a body with no soul in it.

So, that actually makes Sela and Erik gender-flips of the tailor and the noblewoman (Rule 63 being a common fanservice tactic in Zenescope's world-building, and in racy, independent comics in general), with the unsavory aspects of the evil wizard's intentions in the original tale omitted for this adaptation or changed to something we may find out in a later issue.

As far as new characters and information go, we are introduced to Kozak, the Travelocity Healing Gnome, who places Erik's soulless body in stasis in The Glass Coffin, where he will remain to fuel the worst aspects of Sela’s character for many issues to come while she searches Myst for his soul. We also learn that Sela and Erik had a child during one of those Timepiece-induced bouts of amnesia Belinda hit her with back in the day.

Following an encounter with the vengeful wizard (whose name is Morgazera, and he can transform into animals like Jafar at the end of Aladdin, or like the pervy magician in the original fairy tale), which is interrupted by a group of rat-like beastmen on Morrigan's behalf (I think?) and features a sequence where Sela has once again forgotten how to do her magic pew-pews, the reaper himself appears, offering to help Sela for...reasons that I can't remember.

And that's where the issue ends.

There's some good fight paneling and decent but inconsistent artwork on display here, and from what I remember, the dialogue about Blake and Thane sets up one of my favorite early miniseries ever, and Sela’s child becomes a super-important character who was given tons of longevity in more recent Zenescope publications. But the stink of this part of Sela’s character development still lingers in my sense memory.

The fairy tale that inspired this next issue of Grimm Fairy Tales for the Retrospective was pretty hard to pin down in terms of an original text. Googling "golden stag" mostly gives results about the item in Animal Crossing or a Mediterranean fusion restaurant. Adding "fairy tale" or "Romanian fairy tale" narrows it down to links to the comic book itself, various fan-generated Romanian legends (including one about a man who teaches his village to overcome religious prejudices and be more in tune with nature because the Golden Stag gave him elf/fairy powers, and when he dies, he becomes the new Golden Stag for the next generation), and a Wikipedia entry giving its fairy tale type and a brief (but confusing because of translation issues) synopsis of The Golden Stag.

GFT #52: The Golden Stag

Unlike most of the inspirations for GFT issues, this is not based on a Kinder Und Hausmarchen selection, instead coming from the Romanian fairy tale, Cerbul de aur by Costache Georgescu and compiled by Dumitru Stancescu. It's kind of a mix of Hansel & Gretel, The Glass Coffin, and Rapunzel, but is mostly classified as a "Little Brother and Little Sister" type story.

In the original, an old man remarries, and his new wife tells him to lose his children, from his first marriage, in the woods. They find their way back because the boy was covered in ashes and left a trail, but the second time the old man tries to lose them, he succeeds (in a rare subversion of the fairy tale Rule Of Three). When they get thirsty while lost in the woods, the Rule Of Three makes a return, with the sister warning her brother not to drink from the tracks of a fox, a bear, and then a stag. Unable to stave off his thirst any longer, the boy drinks and becomes The Golden Stag, carrying his sister off in his antlers because starving, dehydrated children can survive that, too, I guess.

Speaking of things that children cannot survive under normal circumstances, the Stag makes a nest for his sister in a tree, where she grows up. Neither the summary nor the one, poorly translated version of the tale that I could find, say anything about how she gets food and water, and both insinuate that she never comes down (hence the Rapunzel part of the story). So of course, a prince happens along one day and falls in love with the dirty, emaciated, dehydrated girl he finds living in a tree, and offers a reward to whoever can get her out of the tree. So an old woman tricks her and kidnaps her for him, and when Stag-bro follows, the prince treats him like a stable animal despite knowing he is her brother. And it wouldn't be a centuries-old, culturally insensitive string of nonsense if the happy ending didn't involve a jealous gypsy being stoned to death for pretending to be the sister so she could be with the prince in her place.

The Zenescope version, on the other hand, is more of an adaptation of the Stag vs. Bull deathmatch from the original Glass Coffin tale. After reluctantly accepting Morrigan's assistance because he used to be the king of Limbo in his early days as the Dark One's associate, and after accepting a few magical goodies (a size-shifting bird from Blake and a shield-generating bracelet from Morrigan that may prove to be a double-cross later, but I don't remember), Sela begins her quest for Erik's soul across the realm of Myst. She is attacked again by Morgazera, who shifts into a bull, and a Golden Stag comes to her rescue. Somehow, Sela is able to recognize the presence of Erik's soul in the Stag by seeing its eyes during a heated battle, but as Zenescope often did in its early days, the fortune of the outcome is reversed, with the bull claiming victory and sending the Stag plummeting to its death over a cliff before setting its sights back on Sela as the issue ends. There are also a few pages of B-plot where Orcus continues claiming his lands (starting with the farmer's land from the "Seven Ravens" part of The Devil's Gambit), but this mainly serves as an issue lead-in and cutaway device to the action with Morgazera and Sela.

The art style is consistent with the previous issue, making this feel more like a single, serialized narrative, and the action is still well-paneled. but detail is often lost in the pacing. Unless we're talking about the backgrounds that show off the rich landscape of Myst, which are on another level compared to the fluctuating quality of the character models.

In preparation for these GFT Retrospective pieces, I research the original fairy tales that each issue is based on so I can provide some comparative analysis between the versions and point out the more absurd and poorly aged quirks of the cultures and story structures that made these (originally word-of-mouth, because they came about in cultures that either hadn't invented regional paper stock yet or were too elitist for the poor to afford writing materials or the education to use them) moral allegories into the pop-culture foundations for modern society that they became. There's a reason the Disney Princess era films are so popular, why YouTube is full of slideshow, storybook, and international knockoff versions of common fairy tales, and why Zenescope even exists at all. They're the main, wear it on your sleeve inspiration for RWBY. Hell, if not for China doing a subverted hero's journey fairy tale about an egotistical monkey-demon challenging the heavens and gaining enlightenment, Dragon Ball would not exist.

But unfortunately, some fairy tales are so popular that they prevent content creators like myself from properly searching for what we need.

What I was able to find in my search (aside from multiple, irrelevant top results about Snow White) was an article by Eniko Stringham, going into the history of dwarves in German or Germanic fairy tales, and detailing five categories of how dwarves are portrayed and used to serve the story in these tales. Aside from spelling "heroine" like the drug (no 'e') and using mainstream fairy tales as examples (so there was nothing that I immediately went, "that's just like the story in that comic book I read!"), it's a good, informative piece. Now, let's get into talking about "that comic book I read."

GFT #53: The Fairy And the Dwarf

Picking up right where the last issue left off, we're in media res (because I just watched a Linkara video where he says that a lot, I know what it means, and that's the perfect time to use "expensive" language), with Sela at the mercy of Morgazera's bull form. He manages to send Sela over the cliff, but she is saved by Blake's size-shifting (and talking?, but it does that between panels) bird, Pyros, and in steps the titular dwarf, named Bolder (who will join Blake much later for one of my favorite early miniseries ever), to save the day with Earth magic, a big pickaxe, and some witty banter. If you can't tell, I like Bolder.

We quickly learn that the Golden Stag who sacrificed itself for Sela might have been a spirit animal, as Bolder seems to know that there has not been such a creature in that area of Myst for "ages."

The duo's conversation about the stag and Delphina (an oracle, whom Morrigan sent her to find so she could more easily locate Erik's soul) leads into a tale of Morrigan's origins.

Death, a.k.a. Morrigan, was once a human knight in love with a princess named Esmerelda (who gets a variety of very Zenescope wardrobe designs throughout the course of Bolder's tale). Because classism and fairy tales, the king used dark magic to summon an evil dwarf named Blagg to break up Morrigan and Esmerelda's relationship. And despite Blagg being summoned with dark magic and looking like a cross between Rasputin from the Anastasia movie and the snaggle-toothed beggar Jafar shapeshifts into in Aladdin, everyone seems to trust him, so he easily manipulates a fairy (who is very similar in design to Belle from the Neverland miniseries, but clearly not the same character) into kidnapping Morrigan, worms his way into being the king's advisor, tricks Esmerelda into trying to rescue Morrigan, kills the fairy, burns Morrigan's face so Esmerelda will reject him, convinces the king to let him marry her because he's a hero now, then has the king and Esmerelda killed so he can take the throne for himself. Since Morrigan lacked the strength and manpower to save his true love, he sells his soul to the Dark One (as you do if you're a GFT character whose life sucks), becoming Death and exacting his revenge.

Given its concessions-by-ignorance to make the plot happen, Morrigan's origin story was a fun read with more decent-to-great artwork and good but safe action paneling, and it leads into the revelation that Blagg was Bolder's brother.

But it also leads to some more infuriating dialogue from Sela, who (despite having used a magic book to send people into their fairy tale past lives; summoned weapons and monsters to battle Belinda; met Death, a knight, a fairy, a dwarf, a lion-man, an orc, a prince with toy-mancing powers, rat demons, the Dark One, a shape-shifting wizard, and a unicorn; traveled to multiple alternate dimensions; and can fire magic lasers from her hands) still insists on asking if the story she just heard from a dwarf inside a dead oracle's house really happened or if it's a fairy tale. I mean, come on, Sela! At this point, you should just shut up and assume that any time you hear a story and even think about asking that stupid-ass question, the answer is yes; in a series called Grimm Fairy Tales, all fairy tales really happened!

Meanwhile, back in the B-plot's B-plot, Gruel finds Morgazera at the bottom of the cliff, impaled on a rather large tree branch and unable to fully revert to his humanoid state, as he still has bull horns. Morgazera gives Gruel his remaining power, and they swear revenge on Sela before the wizard dies and the issue ends.

Aside from the continued insistence on writing Sela as an oblivious idiot, I remain surprised at how much I'm enjoying this next run of issues. The pacing, even when it slows down for an exposition dump like this, flows incredibly well, the action is well-depicted and much easier to follow than in something like Wonderland or the one-off, independently outsourced issues that Grimm Fairy Tales began with, and Zenescope are showing off just how well they can do at a serialized narrative after mainly being episodic for so long.

Speaking of which, it's time to begin the Grateful Beasts Arc!

The Grateful Beasts is a Hungarian fairy tale first collected by Georg von Gaal in Mährchen der Magyaren (which I think translates to Tales Of the Magyars or Hungarian Tales) in 1822. There is a similar tale from Kinder und hausmarchen called The Queen Bee, which is the variation I read, and a non-Grimm German tale called The Enchanted Princess, which also has a similar premise and plot. The Grateful Beasts is the first doubly classified Aarne-Thompson tale, with type 554 (The Grateful Animals, which is obvious) and type 613 (Truth and Falsehood, named after the Norwegian fairy tale, True and Untrue, which weirdly has its own classification despite being very similar in plot to The Grateful Beasts).

In the namesake Hungarian version, a handsome boy gets tricked into blinding and maiming himself by his two brothers because they are ugly, evil, hungry, jealous assholes and this is a 19th century, Eastern European fairy tale. And because this is a fairy tale, and those always make sense, the blinded and crippled pretty boy just happens to crawl to a gallows that is within walking distance of a lake with magical healing powers and is the favorite hangout of a pair of talking crows.

After healing himself in the lake, he bottles some of it to take with him and ends up using it to heal a wolf, a mouse, and a queen bee.

The coincidences pile up as he later seeks employment with a king, where his two asshole brothers are already working, so they trick the king into pulling a King Eurystheus on him (but there are only three labors instead of twelve because fairy tales have to follow the Rule Of Three). But despite the impossible nature of the tasks and his brothers' meddling, he completes the king's trials with the help of the three beasts he healed before, including your typical fairy tale "happily ever after" where the main character marries the princess while her father, his court, and the two asshole brothers are dismembered and eaten by the wolves...you know; for kids!

GFT #54: The Grateful Beasts

The Zenescope version begins with a flashback and dialogue that is worded to make it seem like Sela is happy that everyone she ever loved is dead, which is why context is very important. See, at some point, Sela and Erik (who looks like he's going to audition to be the next Brawny mascot) managed to escape from the omnipresent, watchful eye of the Dark Horde and have a baby. Sela is a nigh-immortal Falseblood (since GFT #49 and Hard Choices retconned that for us) and Erik is a Highborn/Pureblood (depending on which side of the genetic supremacy argument a given character stands), so what she really means is that she's happy to finally have a family whom she will not outlive (so, screw Erik's feelings if Sela died first, I guess?).

Because Erik traded in his Nutcracker monkey suit to be Snow White's Huntsman and all axes are created equal, they live in a log cabin and Erik is out pondering how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood when Fenton and Volac (from The Devil's Brother and the Las Vegas Annual) show up to "talk," which means intimidation and blackmail...and summoning the Greek god of war to destroy their house.

The appearance of Ares here will play into many future event series and character origins, but the deity himself will seldom, if ever, be seen again.

This is also where Sela's nightmare ends, and she wakes in a panic to find Bolder packing (they've apparently spent several days living in the deceased oracle's house between issues because Bolder was Delphina's assistant) to join her on her journey to find Erik's soul. He says he knows where to find the key to the Underworld (which is different from the Greek Underworld and the Inferno even though we know Greek gods exist in GFT lore now?), so he's going to be her guide through Myst. But because a fairy tale needs to be adapted, Sela gets mad and goes Super-Saiyan to save a beehive from some orcs, uses Healing Magic the right way to save a couple of ducks, and frees a bound wolf who had been hunted and captured by the next issue's titular villain, the Goblin Queen.

That will have to wait until next week, but for now, there are a few other details that bear mentioning. First is the family whom Sela and Bolder encounter after she saves the bees. They live in fear of the Dark Horde, and the mother says she wishes the Horde had been able to conquer the Nexus so they would leave her family alone, not understanding why the people of Earth should matter to her. This spotlight on self-preservation through narrow-minded ignorance is a message that especially rings true now, more than ten years after the issue's publication. The world is so much bigger and smaller than it used to be, with increased technology, populations, societal problems, and means of distracting ourselves from those problems. There's so much connection possibility and data availability that our only options seem to be all or nothing. Instead of "where can I help and how?", it's a toxic mix of "we need to focus on us right now" (or "I need to focus on me right now") and "as long as it isn't me." As someone who is currently focusing on his own problems (from both an acknowledgement and procrastinating escapism perspective, minus the alcoholism and financially crippling gambling this time), I cannot begin to offer a solution or contribution to anything of significance, so fostering awareness will have to be enough.

The other, less important and more socially detached detail of the issue is that Gruel returns to Orcus with Morgazera's body in hand. Also, I guess we're still trying to make Pinocchio happen because he's just a cannibal now, proving that Pinocchio should have never been a thing because underneath all the wood, he's just a child and doing anything cool with him would have incurred the wrath of the Marvel-owning Mouse. Talk about your ungrateful beasts, huh?

Sela's "I'm suddenly mad and super-strong and can pull magic powers out of my ass because of bees and ducks and a big dog" character flip was clearly a stretch to make the narrative fit a fairy tale, and some of the dialogue is stilted, but the outbursts themselves were cathartic and well paneled, the art style is staying consistent (with perhaps a little bit of off-model stylistic flourishes being put to appropriate use near the end), and Bolder is a great character for Sela to bounce off of, providing strength and quippy dialogue that can either match her or compensate for her as needed.

From what I could find, The Goblin Queen isn't directly based on any pre-existing fairy tale. There is a two-book series of children's fantasy novels from the late 1800s by George MacDonald, the first of which is The Princess And the Goblin, and there are theatrical adaptations of The Snow Queen in which she commands goblin underlings, but these are superficial and nominal similarities only, with no real plot inspirations other than what I will get into in the coming issue analysis.

Also, spoilers for a forty-one-year-old comic book character, but though they have the same name, this has nothing to do with Marvel's Goblin Queen, Madelyne Pryor, who is a clone of the then-presumed-dead Jean Grey, host of the Phoenix Force who sacrificed herself to keep the giant, creation elemental bird made of fire from eating every planet in the universe because human feelings gave it the appetite of a teenage boy and the emotional intelligence and volatility of a weak-minded teenage girl with a thing for Victorian bondage attire. At least, that's what I remember from the 90s X-Men cartoon because I never read the comics. Madelyne Pryor features heavily in the new continuation series, X-Men '97, which I will probably binge later in the year (or next year, after the second season, provided I'm not still deep in One Piece and other anime) with the original series. So, that should keep things current in terms of Algorithm-focused references, right?

GFT #55: The Goblin Queen

As has become the new norm in the post-Hard Choices era of Grimm Fairy Tales, this issue picks up where The Grateful Beasts left off, with Sela and Bolder besieged by the Goblin Queen and her (duh) goblins. The art here is noticeably darker and more dramatic, creating an intense, almost claustrophobic atmosphere that works in stark contrast to the previous issues' brighter, more majestic and epic surroundings. We're in enemy territory now, and the art team (Dafu Yu and Studio Cirque, with designs by Pinocchio legend David Seidman; Seidman has been involved since at least The Glass Coffin, and Studio Cirque since The Golden Stag--with the occasional, one-issue absence for each of them so far) want us to know it and feel it. Sela has another Super-Saiyan ass-pull outburst, but despite trading blades with Belinda for centuries, she is outclassed by the Goblin Queen almost immediately and the goblins themselves are too numerous for Bolder to pick up the slack, so he spills the tea that they are on a quest on Morrigan's behalf in hopes that she will spare Sela's life. We then get ominous hints that Death reclaiming his throne in Limbo won't be as easy as expected.

Before Sela's fate is decided (but we know she's going to survive because she already died once and just began her journey in earnest a few issues ago, and she's the main character, for better or worse), the issue cuts back to Gruel and Orcus, who hold a cremation ceremony for Morgazera (shown lying in repose, with the bull horns presumably vanished between issues after his mana faded, or the artists forgot to draw them?) and plan for more revenge-driven hate crimes against Sela by Orcus giving Gruel the last remaining claw of an extinct species of dragon so he can sacrifice his remaining humanity for power. Huh...Orcus uses the sharp calcium protuberance of an extinct mythical animal to seek revenge on Sela and give someone enhanced power in exchange for their humanity...where have we heard that before?

Oh well, no time to ponder one-note villain motivations from Volume 8 because it's back to the main story, where the Goblin Queen (here looking like a generic, evil sword-and-sorcery chick who got a green wig and devil-horn headband from a post-Halloween bargain sale at Party City) has temporarily spared Sela's life in exchange for doing the "animals I was nice to complete impossible tasks for me" fetch quests that made up the second half of The Grateful Beasts. The bees gather a hundred pearls from a broken necklace that were scattered around a field of flowers (probably for a very good reason that has something to do with the Goblin Queen's power?).

Next (and with a similar, "this was probably done for a reason, but I'll risk making a villain stronger to save my friend that I've barely known for a week" catch), the ducks help Sela retrieve a lost crown from the bottom of a deep lake. Sela is nigh-immortal and capable of pulling random powers out of her ass (which is her new, magical hammerspace now that her book is gone, apparently), and yet she has trouble holding her breath long enough to swim to the bottom of a lake because this part of the fairy tale needs to get paid off. And maybe the size of her boobs and the weird sinus issues of the resting bitch face she's drawn with have something to do with it, too....

Also, it wouldn't be a fairy tale adaptation without animals that can understand human speech because she just tells the ducks that she's looking for a crown and they get it for her.

Things deviate from The Grateful Beasts after that (the animals and tasks were already different, but the story remained similar enough) when the Goblin Queen reveals that she has the key to Limbo around her neck, and sets Bolder free because Sela will need all the help she can get in the third trial: escaping from her lair without becoming goblin food! Zenescope co-creator and series writer Joe Brusha gives the Goblin Queen some pretty badass villain lines here, because while Sela's story is the one that matters most (and Bolder makes for one hell of a quippy sidekick/co-lead), using the Rule Of Cool to try to get a new villain over is just as important...maybe to a fault, because Sela and Bolder still get some stilted writing here and there.

I've voiced my criticisms, and will continue to do so, but I am way more on board with this arc than I remember being at first read, making this a rare case of analysis and Future Knowledge upping the enjoyment factor on something.

Yet again, we come to a named issue that has no clear fairy tale inspiration. There are many fairy tales that feature a key, like the Russian tale, "The Death Of Koschei the Deathless" (which got its own GFT adaptation much later on in issue #95), "Bluebeard" (which has a similar, "here's a key, I'm going away for awhile, don't open the room" setup) and the previously referenced "The Golden Key," wherein a boy finds a key in the snow and uses it to open a box. The End. To be continued when it's over; you just got trolled like a fiddle, wichser!

GFT #56: Death's Key

Instead of being directly based in name and plot on an existing fairy tale, Death's Key is really just The Goblin Queen Part II, or The Grateful Beasts Part III: The Final Chapter. At least, that's how it begins.

Picking up where the last issue left off, Sela and Bolder are surrounded and overwhelmed by the Goblin Queen and her...pets, forced to rely on Morrigan's forcefield bracer as a temporary defensive stopgap. And because we still have one more grateful beast to pay off, in come a pack of white wolves to even the odds for our heroes. Sela is still outmatched in swordsmanship by the Goblin Queen, but the pack leader comes to her aid, ending up looking badass with the Queen's broadsword in its jaws like a lycan version of Zoro from One Piece. The Goblin Queen surrenders the Limbo key and escapes with some cliche, threat of future retaliation dialogue that is a major step down from the "I'll bury [your hammer] with your bones. If there are any left." line she got last issue. I mean, they even give her the "vanish down a narrow hallway, dramatically followed by her flowing cape and maniacal laughter" schtick to up the dairy intolerance level of the cheese on display here.

Following some quality banter between Sela and Bolder where he starts rambling on about dwarven courage at the Battle of Oxmoor (which I don't think gets mentioned again), things cut back to the Goblin Queen as she speaks (using a mirror, because of course) to an as-yet-unidentified woman in a reaper robe with an imposing and shadowed male figure standing behind her. They exchange some vague words on dealing with Sela and Morrigan, and the Goblin Queen assembles the crown and pearls that Sela recovered in the last issue because villain alliances are always temporary conveniences built on acquiring individual power.

Speaking of which, Sela and Bolder return to Delphina's house, where they deliver the Limbo key to Morrigan...who betrays them, uses the bracer to control Sela into attacking Bolder (because his brother ruined Morrigan's life, and of course a powerful defensive magic item came with a catch), and uses the key to return to Earth where he is seen as a god (or a fallen angel, depending on the source) but still has to play stooge to the Dark One. So, Sela's quest to save Erik's soul and learn what became of their child is prolonged once again. But thankfully for her (and for my memory, because this is awesome), Morrigan suggests she go to the city of Tallus, where a priestess named Druanna may be able to provide answers. Unfortunately, though, Tallus is where the survivors of Orcus' (and by extension, Pinocchio's, Gruel's, and their army of totally original Doom creature cosplayers') rampage have fled, which means a battle will be eminent in the next Volume.

The action here is at a minimum, focusing more on grand moments and splash pages than blow-by-blow paneling. Studio Cirque does a masterful job as always with the colors, but the line work by Brent Peeples is sketchy-looking and low on detail compared to previous issues' line artists, and the absence of David Seidman in the production role shows in the dip in quality as well. The only real exceptions are the close-ups of Death (making something as stark as a human skull look expressive) and the varied goblin designs that give them varying hairstyles, physiques, and even a few with wings (but I think that makes it an imp? or is it just a winged goblin?). I appreciated the gravitas they gave to Morrigan's character here, Bolder's banter is still peak, and the introduction of Druanna, even if only by name, continues the foreshadowing of good things to come. But otherwise, there isn't much of substance going on here.

Speaking of things that are short on substance, there is no fairy tale to do comparative analysis, and the following short story doesn't have anything to talk about in terms of Easter eggs. But it's still important, so here it is:

GFT Short Story #9: Goddess

The titular goddess in question here is Venus, known in Greek circles as Aphrodite. Which is interesting from a few angles because when Sela and Erik are attacked in her flashback from the beginning of The Grateful Beasts, the god responsible is referred to as Ares, rather than Mars. One could assume that this is yet another case of Zenescope not being able to keep their lore consistent, but seeing as how Ralph Tedesco and Joe Brusha were among the rare exceptions to "you can't make money with a degree in fairy tales," I will play Dark One's advocate and say that marketing and the Rule Of Cool were responsible for the pantheon inconsistency here, rather than early Zenescope doing what early Zenescope be doing.

Clearly, Venus likes dudes. Her favorite tomato is beefcake, she gets all of her furniture from Chippendale's, her favorite seafood is mussels, she measures computer memory in giga-Chads, and her favorite YouTube videos are Dragon Ball shorts about Trunks. And those were all jokes because so far, the most interesting thing about her is that, despite having a female assistant whom she seems to trust, Venus' personality falls somewhere between willing reverse-harem protagonist (but she's the villain, so she wants to control all men and not share them with other women like "that Falseblood tramp," Sela), insatiable succubus, and jealous, controlling slut. I said, "so far." This is a brief introduction to her in the Grimm Fairy Tales canon, and we are talking about someone who was born fully grown and naked from a clamshell full of Neptune's foamy sperm, and who once turned a man into a flower because he looked at his reflection too much. But even considering the lewd and vengeful nature of her mythological origins, it's still shallow enough to make Pan and Belle feel three-dimensional.

Which is where the Dark One comes in! Yes; this is the first look we get at events outside of Myst since the finale of Hard Choices. Venus has her Man-Eating Woman-Hater's Club (ask your grandparents or surviving great-grandparents about that reference because I feel too old to admit that I understand it) where she can "invite" men to join her and disappear by the dozens, and no one bats an eye. And like I said, Malec is here (and is the one man she can't stand, even though Fenton, Pan, and Charles Dodgson exist). He brings news of the end of Death's Key (where Morrigan used Sela to find a way to return to the Nexus) and Sela's growing power and returning memories. As it turns out, Ares was not working directly for Malec, but kidnapped Sela's and Erik's child for Venus herself, as she thinks the child will one day help her regain her "former glory" from a time when even her Olympian family bowed to her influence.

I'm not going to spoil anything here because this one conversation sets up a lot of important events and characters for later (like, at least a handful of miniseries and events and one character who I think is still a series focus to this day), so that's pretty much it: just a heaping helping of shallow character introduction and one conversation that clues us in on the state of the Nexus and sets up another journey for Sela far down the road.

The new character introductions continue as we wrap things up with a look at the 2010 Holiday Edition.

Merry Christmas In July, Ticketholders!

Or if you're Babyface, Christmas in June...just to get that reference out of the way. But it's clearly July right now, so Christmas In July is a global inclusivity thing inspired by a two-hundred-thirty-year-old opera and a comedy movie from the 1940s, and is a commercial excuse to celebrate Christmas twice a year because (HOT TAKE INCOMING!) the Earth is round and the Southern Hemisphere exists, where the seasons are flipped. Yeah, Australia is having winter right now. Which is weird and cool, but makes some of the alternative names for Christmas In July either nonsensical or stupidly obvious. Christmas In July is also known as both Christmas In Winter (duh, and to us North-Hemis, that's just Christmas) and Christmas In Summer.

But you didn't come here to listen to me ramble on about some niche, seemingly East Coast-specific "holiday;" you came for the Zenescope goods!

GFT Holiday Edition #2 (2010)

Following the...existence...of "Sela and Love Interest Number Five Kill Sentient Toys and Demonic Rats On Christmas," the Zenescope crew decided that it might be a good idea to adhere to the formula of their other yearly specials by introducing a new character and doing an anthology collection instead of a single, long-form narrative.

Said new character is Krampus: a shape-shifting maker of morbid mischief who looks like a brown-skinned demon with a body covered in razor-toothed mouths. He strikes the perfect balance of late-franchise Freddy Kruger campiness and literal body horror, and I like him as a villain.

The framing story, "Coming to Town," sees Krampus...coming to town for Christmas in the Big Apple, and expressing biased disappointment at the lack of Holiday Spirit amongst the citizens of the rudest, most commercial city in America. His focus, though, becomes selfish foster-couple Kevin and Amy, whose custodial son, Jimmy, just wants his parolee father (and a Transformer, I guess) to come home for Christmas. But when Kevin gets distracted by some sexy Mrs. Clausplayers, Jimmy comes across a mysterious present left by Krampus and runs off when the disguised demon threatens to take him away and eat him.

In "Do You Hear What I Hear?," we meet Jimmy's father, Jimbo, and his scumbag friend, Jerry, who are having drinks at a bar. As these things go, Jimbo is internally monologuing about how The System is rigged against guys like him and there's no supernatural entity out there (SUBTLE, DRAMATIC IRONY!!!) waiting to rescue or punish him, so you just have to learn to be a Taker without getting Took, and his "friend," Jerry (because two Jims wasn't unoriginal enough) just happens to have a big score planned where "nobody will get hurt"...except for the mall security guard Jerry tasers unconscious and ties up. This is where Jimbo backs out, leaving Jerry to rob the department store alone. Unfortunately, Krampus is posing as a Santa statue, so things don't end well for the Naughty Jerry.

Cut over to the home of Kevin, Amy, and their daughter Dana (who is out buying a Pollyanna/Secret Santa gift for her friend), where the next story, "Christmas Future," takes place. A disguised Krampus gives the couple a smart device called the Z-Pod - later called the Z-Touch by Amy - (because Zenescope was still working off their Mariken Xpriss debt from drinking too much Zenebucks Coffee at the Rock Hard Hotel at this time), claiming it can predict the future. They start small with the weather and election results before moving on to greedier uses like winning the lottery. But when the predictions turn morbid and seem to be about the couple themselves, they turn on each other and things end badly for them as well.

Time to check in on "The Pollyanna." Unwilling to brave the long lines in the inconsistently portrayed New York winter weather, Dana finds her way to an unusual shop run by a disguised Krampus that has a C.S. Moore Fantastic Realm Alice Liddle statue on display (get yours on eBay now!). He gives Dana a gift box that looks eerily similar to the one Jimmy ran off with earlier, warning her not to let curiosity or greed get the better of her. But the box is cursed, so Dana's friends end up dead and she goes to prison for murder. Both "Christmas Future" and "The Pollyanna" have an 80s-90s anthology horror vibe, like they belong in Creepshow, Amazing Stories, Tales From the Darkside, or especially Tales From the Crypt, and I love it. I guess "Do You Hear What I Hear?" fits that mold, too, but it's too predicated on bad heist movie clichés and lacks the silly, macabre twist that had the other stories drawing that nostalgic comparison for me.

Which brings us back to the framing narrative, "Coming to Town." Jimmy, Jr. returns home with his mystery package to find that Kevin, Amy, and Dana are gone, and upon opening the box, he finds a demonic mask that calls to him in Krampus' voice, promising power, vengeance, and world domination. But because it makes no sense for any sane child to want that, and because Santa Claus told Jimbo where to find Jimmy, father and son are reunited in the St. Nick of time while Santa and Krampus trade quips in the background, promising to challenge one another's schemes and worldviews again next year.

Aside from the moral simplicity and cliché-heavy nature of this special, I like the new direction the Christmas/Holiday Edition takes from this point on. I enjoy Krampus as a holiday-themed villain, his design is sufficiently unique and "where is it safe to touch the page?" creepy, and the inspirations for the two standout stories are clear and very much welcome. Unlike the Halloween Edition from the same year, I didn't even care about it being unimportant to the main continuity; this special was just so much seasonal fun and joy to read, gore included.

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